Wicked Haunted
An Anthology of the New England Horror Writers
Edited by
Scott T. Goudsward
Daniel G. Keohane
David Price
Maine - New Hampshire - Vermont - Massachusetts - Rhode Island - Connecticut
www.newenglandhorror.org
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Knock, Knock Artwork by Kali Moulton
“The Thing With No Face” by Peter N. Dudar
“Lost Boy” by Bracken MacLeod
“Scrying Through Torn Screens” by Patricia Gomes
“They, Too, Want to be Remembered” by KH Vaughan
“Everything Smells Like Smoke Again” by Curtis M. Lawson
“The Boy on the Red Tricycle” by Dan Szczesny
One Way Dead End Artwork by Ogmios
“East Boston Relief Station” by Paul R. McNamee
“Mouse” by Larissa Glasser
“The Walking Man” by Matt Bechtel
“My Work is Not Yet Completed” by Nick Manzolillo
“Ghosts In Their Eyes” by Trisha J. Wooldridge
“They Come With the Storm” by Dan Foley
“Turn Up the Old Victrola” by Tom Deady
“Ghost Maker” by Emma J. Gibbon
“The Pick Apart” by Paul McMahon
“The Stranding Off Schoodic Point” by R.C. Mulhare
“Triumph of the Spirit” by GD Dearborn
Ghost on a Swing Artwork by Judi Calhoun
“The Road to Gallway” by Rob Smales
“The Thin Place” by Morgan Sylvia
“Tripping the Ghost” by Barry Lee Dejasu
“we’re all haunted here” by doungai gam
“Murmur” by Jeremy Flagg
“Pulped” by James A. Moore
About the Contributors
Other Anthologies of the New England Horror Writers
Dedication
Copyright Page
Knock Knock by Kali Moulton
In Appreciation for the stories of Shirley Jackson,
one of the Greatest New England Ghost Writers…
The Thing With No Face
Peter N. Dudar
I don’t want to remember…Please don’t make me remember!
Kevin Ellis woke up just after three a.m., his heart jack-hammering in his chest, his skin cold and clammy from the skein of midsummer sweat. He’d only been home (his childhood home in Latham) for two days, and the nightmares had returned. Kevin’s bedroom had remained unchanged for the last three decades; a shrine to the life of an introverted teenager of the eighties that Kevin had, over the years, sloughed off like the dead scales of a snake. Faye Ellis had sworn as far back as Kevin’s wedding day that she was going to box up all his belongings and he either could take them home with him or she would have them hauled off to the town landfill. His mother had intended to turn the bedroom into a guestroom, with enough space for a crib for when he and Carrie finally presented her with a grandchild. The divorce two years later put the final nail in that fantasy. There, in the darkness, Kevin found himself wishing things might have been different.
In the dark, the sameness of his childhood bedroom made it feel like no time had passed. In his heart and his mind he was twelve again, and the sameness meant the past still existed.
Kevin pushed the switch on the bedside lamp and shielded his eyes as the light singed away the image still lingering from the dream. He sat up and let his legs slip off the mattress until his feet touched the floor. The air conditioner in his window kept the humidity at bay, but the air in the room still felt warm and uncomfortable. He found himself wishing he’d just checked into the Econo Lodge Motel over on Route 7. He’d have had his privacy, and would probably have been able to escape the nightmares that invariably returned every time he came home to visit his mother. But after his father’s passing seven years ago, there was no way to escape Faye Ellis’s guilt trips about how his visits were growing less in frequency and duration.
The room felt warmer than usual. Kevin stood, scratched himself for a moment, and then wandered over to the air conditioner to see if it might be dialed down to a lower setting. The green digital number read sixty-six degrees (the temperature his mom had pre-programmed before he arrived, and would complain about if he forgot to set it back when he started his day), but he was sure it could go down to at least sixty-two. He smiled as he pressed the button, and just like in his childhood he felt the supreme joy of secretly going against his mother’s wishes. The green digits dropped to 62, and the extra blast of cold air made his sweaty skin prickle with goose bumps. Kevin crossed his arms against his chest and turned to climb back into bed when he heard the dog barking from the yard behind the fence. Kevin froze in place as the yelps pierced the darkness and echoed off the window pane. His heartbeat pounded in his chest and temples as his mind slipped back to childhood again.
Old man Grady’s dog.
Of course, that was impossible. They put Butch down over two decades ago, back when…
He crept up to the window and peeked out from the slits in the blinds.
The thing outside was watching him.
He froze in place, and let his eyes penetrate the darkness of the backyard. Seeing it now under the hazy summer starlight, the land beneath his window looked like a long-forgotten realm of sinister shadows and unnatural contours. In the darkness, lawn furniture resembled hunched dwarves offering dreadful devotions to the night. The tool shed was an ancient castle, with dragon eyes peering out whenever the headlights of the neighbor’s car threw reflections on the glass. The flowerbed along the back fence was a row of tombstones whenever the full moon rose above them. These things Kevin knew by heart from childhood and he’d long since learned to see them for what they really were. But the thing standing directly in the center of the lawn was loathsome; a silhouette of spindly white arms and legs that fluttered in the hot pre-dawn breeze like a frayed flag. The apparition floated in defiance of the tangible things surrounding it, as if it somehow wanted to find the same permanence but could not. Kevin struggled to make his eyes focus harder, trying to see what was looking up into his bedroom, but the thing seemed to have no face. No eyes or nose or jaw line to give it the missing touch of humanity. Whatever it was simply was, an ethereal reflection of something long dead.
He leaned closer to the glass and cupped his hands around his eyes to lower the glare from the lamp. Holding his breath to keep the window from fogging, he glared at the phantasm. The thing with no face tried to glare back, to make eye contact, and when it decided it could not, its head split apart where the mouth should have been and the screech from lifeless vocal chords pierced the darkness. Kevin fell away from the window just as the electricity went out and the noise of the air conditioner died away.
It was when he realized the dog had stopped barking and the night was deathly silent again, and that his nightmare had passed from the dreamtime into reality.
* * *
“You’ve hardly touched your breakfast,” his mother commented as she sat down at the table and unfolded the morning newspaper. Faye Ellis had already eaten her slice of toast with cottage cheese and her cup of diced peaches, and had already cleaned her dishes. Judging by how little coffee was left in the urn, she’d also finished at least two cups, although he couldn’t be sure she’d actually made a full pot. At least she was still in her pajamas and bathrobe, and to his estimation Kevin couldn’t understand how she didn’t melt under all those layers. The morning was already pushing 80 degrees.
“
I didn’t sleep well, Ma.”
“Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. The neighborhood must have had a blackout last night. Too many air conditioners draining all that electricity away. It happens every now and then, when the summer gets too hot.”
“Mom, did you hear something outside this morning? Just after three a.m.?”
Faye picked up her coffee mug and took a long sip, then flipped through the newspaper to find the obituary page. Kevin couldn’t help but flinch as she spread the paper out on the table, revealing rows of names and photographs of those once living the day before. From where he was sitting, the newspaper could have been the map to a graveyard. This was her daily routine; one that hadn’t changed since he moved out of the house to start his own life.
“Like what?” she said. “Maybe you heard one of the transformers shorting out. That’s usually what happens when we lose power. Sometimes they even sound like a small explosion.”
“No, Ma, not like that. I just…I don’t know.” Kevin pushed his fork into the fried egg on his plate and cut it apart. Seeing the slit he’d made oozing yellow yolk made him think of the thing outside his window again, just before it screamed. He placed the fork on the plate and pushed it away from him. “Never mind, Mom. I’m sorry, but I’m just not very hungry right now.”
Faye looked up from the paper. “Honey, you get this way every single time you come here. Why won’t you just talk to me about what happened? You’ll feel a lot better if you’d just talk to me. I want for you to not carry things around inside anymore. It’s not healthy for you, sweetheart.”
Kevin glanced at the rows of obituaries in the paper and sighed. It was painfully obvious that she was still carrying things inside as well, that she was just as obsessed as he was with the past but in her own quiet, accusatory way. Perhaps this was her way of trying to get him to surrender and say something first, but that would require making himself remember and that was the last thing he wanted to do.
“I said never mind.”
“Okay, fine. I’m not going to press it.” Faye leaned over and resumed ogling the names of the departed. “If you aren’t going to eat your breakfast, please scrape your plate into the trash and wash it. Maybe you’ll feel hungry enough to eat later on.”
Kevin stood up and walked his plate over to the trashcan. He was just beginning to scrape when his mother broke the awkward silence that had risen between them.
“Oh, my! Charles Grady passed away yesterday.”
Goose bumps prickled up Kevin’s arms and neck. He glanced out the kitchen window at the fence behind the house, toward the house sitting on the opposite side. The Grady house was a derelict gambrel with brown clapboard siding and filthy white shutters weather-worn and rusted until they resembled scabs. From his bedroom window Kevin could see most of the backside of the Grady house, but preferred not to.
“I didn’t think that guy was even still alive,” he said as he turned on the faucet and squirted detergent on the plate. “I’d just assumed he died ages ago. God, he was an old man even when I was in high school.”
“Charles wasn’t that old back then. But the column said he was eighty-one, so he lived a full life. I suppose it’s been ages since I’ve seen him at the grocery store or walking into town. It doesn’t say in the newspaper how they found him or what he died from.”
Kevin walked to the window (the wet plate in his hands spattering droplets onto the floor) and looked at the house behind the fence. From the angle he was looking, he couldn’t see the doghouse that he knew was in old man Grady’s back yard. He’d have been able to if he looked from his bedroom window, but he…
“Mom, how long has Butch been dead?” The question escaped before he even had time to consider what roads the discussion might lead down once asked. Butch had been one of those things he was fighting to not remember. But now that his mind was rolling, the image of the mangy, always-vicious pitbull was at the forefront. He could see the leather collar that looked as if it was too tight, always gouging into the dog’s neck until the fur beneath rubbed clean off. And the hate in its eyes, or the way its fangs protruded like white daggers when it snarled.
Faye pushed the newspaper aside and looked at him, sizing him up with those judgmental hazel eyes.
“Oh, gosh…well, you know they put him down after what happened. Does this mean you’re finally ready to talk about it?”
Kevin felt his cheeks flush.
“No. No, I was only wondering. Did old man Grady ever get a new dog? After Butch died?”
Faye frowned. “Yes, he bought another dog long after you moved away. That one was a Rottweiler named Champ. That thing was a lot more timid than Butch was. Charles was not a good pet owner. He used to put the fear of God into them until they did whatever he commanded.”
“Does he have a dog now? Because I heard it barking last night, and if they took his body away without knowing there’s a dog in the backyard, someone needs to call the police and tell them.”
“No, it’s been a few years since Champ died. He never got a new one after that. Sweetheart, you know there are no bad dogs, only bad owners. And Charles Grady was a terrible owner. Whatever happened to Reggie that day…”
“Mom, I don’t want to talk about it.”
He turned to storm out of the room but realized he was still holding his plate. He tossed it onto the counter where it clanged and vibrated for a moment before falling still. He was already out of the room by the time it finished its vibrato dance on the countertop.
* * *
The bedroom had cooled considerably, and Kevin found himself glad he hadn’t raised the temperature back up to the Faye Ellis setting. Sunlight streamed in from the slats in the blinds, but even with the windows partially obstructed he could detect the storm clouds moving in over town. A thunderstorm was definitely on the horizon, probably hitting sometime before sundown but destined to linger throughout the night. The angels are bowling, his father used to tell him when he was young and the crash of thunderclaps shook the house until he couldn’t sleep. They’ll tire out eventually and go to bed, just like you need to do.
Parents say a lot of things to their children to pacify them.
What would dad have said about hearing the dog this morning?
Kevin moved over to the window, turned the rod until the slits on the Venetian blinds were fully open, and looked over the fence into old man Grady’s yard.
The old, red doghouse was still there, only there was no dog in sight.
“It looks like Snoopy’s doghouse,” Reggie Acton used to say. “You know the one he flies around on like an airplane when he’s chasing the Red Baron?”
The voice was in his head, but it sounded so real that Kevin gasped and stepped back away from the window. He was almost certain the voice came from somewhere behind him, but that would have been as impossible as hearing a dog barking that wasn’t there…or seeing a faceless ghost standing in the backyard.
Please…I don’t want to remember any of this!
Kevin gritted his eyes tight, turned around, and then opened them slowly.
There was nothing in the room with him.
He released the breath he’d been holding (he hadn’t even been aware his breathing stopped), and turned back to the window. The sky was growing dark rapidly as the clouds passed like a razor’s edge across the last vestiges of blue sky. He was certain the temperature outside was going to fall fast, could feel the change in the air and on his skin…
Just like Carrie…she turned cold fast and without warning as well. How much time has passed since she demanded the divorce?
…and switched off the air conditioner. Kevin glanced down into the backyard one last time to see if the faceless thing had returned, and when he was satisfied that it hadn’t, he twisted the rod until the slits were closed tight. Coming home felt like an enormous mistake, just like it had with every previous trip. The only thing left to do was start inventing a new excuse to pack up and hit the road early. Kevin lay down on the
bed, closed his eyes, and tried to concoct some new fabrication to spring on Faye Ellis. In his mind, guilt was a thing with no face—only an incessant weight that tried to squeeze his heart until it stopped beating. Maybe then he would finally find peace.
* * *
He’d fallen asleep.
The nightmare resumed, just as he’d been certain it would. In the dream he was twelve years old again and Reginald Acton was still eleven and still living in the house next door. All the houses on Sparrow Drive were identical Cape Cods, as if the contractors responsible for developing the cul-de-sac followed the same blueprints and merely changed paints to create any sense of individuality. Kevin’s home was green. Reggie’s was canary-yellow. But dreams never follow rules, and in the movie in his head—the memory he was trying so desperately to not remember—Reggie’s house was the same red as Butch’s doghouse. When Kevin squinted his eyes to look at it, the red bled into a deep crimson that clung to the back of his eyelids. In the dream, they were playing in Kevin’s backyard.
“It looks just like Snoopy’s doghouse,” Reggie said as they peered through the slats in the fence at the sleeping dog. “You know the one he flies around on like an airplane when he’s chasing the Red Baron?”
Butch’s left ear twitched, almost as if the beast was eavesdropping rather than snoozing in the shade of the maple tree. Kevin could see the leather collar curling tight into the dog’s neck, and the ratty piece of clothesline rope that cinched from the collar to the big iron spike in the middle of the lawn. The rope was long enough to chase intruders to the fence and nab them down before they could get away. It occurred to him even back then that the only way to escape that damn dog was to get it to chase you around his doghouse a lap or two before trying to jump the fence again, and even that was a snowball’s chance in hell. The years of having Grady for a neighbor meant any Frisbees or softballs or toys that accidentally sailed over the fence were lost treasures…unless old man Grady felt generous enough to toss them back over again while out feeding Butch and cleaning up the festering piles of dog turds.
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